The Mirror
by MouseMaster42
Summary: Severus Snape goes to look in the Mirror of Erised, and is shown more than he wanted to see. It turns out that Lily Potter isn't all that he dreams of. No slash, just solid Severus/Lily with implied parental!Snape as well. Oneshot.


**This piece was inspired by an artwork entitled "Mirror, Mirror" by Kyasarin131 at deviantart, which depicted the Mirror of Erised showing Severus the family he could have had.**

**All characters belong to J.K. Rowling. I'm not her. I also don't own the art piece that inspired this oneshot. **

**Please read, enjoy, and review. (My first Harry Potter fanfiction...)**

**Set during the Sorcerer's Stone. **

**xXx**

**The Mirror**

**xXx**

There was a boy.

He blinked, confused by the difference in his usual vision, striding the few steps from the door over to the glassy mirror, confirming what he wasn't sure he wanted to see. She was there, as always, but instead of just the woman at his side, there was now a child at his hip, looking up at him with wide, trusting, loving eyes that were her precise shade of green. He looked to be about eleven, and there was something about his face that was familiar, although he couldn't put a name to it.

He wracked his mind for any clue as to the boy's identity—a school friend who had died? Somebody's child? No children came to mind.

She touched his shoulder then, her hand as light and as ungraspable as a breeze, her expression chiding him for his confusion. She mouthed something to him, but he couldn't hear. He could never hear. Thanks to this cursed mirror, he could never forget her looks—the precise curve of her lips, the petite bridge of her nose, the eternal bounce in her hair; the color of autumn leaves...the ever-stroked fire beneath the cool emeralds of her eyes...Every aspect of her physical appearance was perfectly preserved and etched into his mind from when he had seen her last, but he could no longer remember her voice with such clarity. Her beautiful tones, her cadence, the music of her laugh...Those things were becoming harder and harder for him to recall, and it terrified him.

She spoke the same four words again, and inclined her head towards the boy, who smiled cheerfully. It was obvious now that he saw them both in the same frame that the child was hers. But as he looked at the face, he wondered—perhaps a little too optimistically—whether he saw a bit of himself looking back at him. A long nose, untidily dark hair that was just a little too flat to have possibly come from her side of the family, although it was sticking up in the back, curling about his ears.

The boy held out his hand, and he found his own hand dropping to his side, fingers uncurling so the boy could slip his palm against his own.

She smiled at him in approval, and he felt the corners of his lips twitching up in response. She glowed when she smiled. And here she was, smiling for him.

And now there was a boy. He marveled at the child's beauty, wondering how his long features had ever matched up with her gentle ones to create such a handsome little boy. His eyes were most remarkable, bright and sparkling and painfully trusting as he looked up at his father through the pane of polished glass separating, his small hand clenched tightly about the larger one.

But there was no physical sensation accompanying the touch. He could not feel his child's warmth, or embrace him like he wanted to. Not for the first time or even the first time that evening, he wished that the mirror would open up like a door and swallow him whole, taking him by and by to the place where she was.

But such a place no longer existed, because she wasn't anywhere anymore.

He looked up again, and any inkling of a smile disappeared from his face as he remembered, as he always did, that the last time he had seen Lily Evans had been at her funeral, as the lid of her casket had been closed on her serene face: beautiful even in death.

The reflection spoke her four words again, laying a hand on the boy's shoulders, but now he wasn't even trying to decipher what she was trying to say to him.

She had always been so beautiful. She had been so easy to love. Sometimes, when he felt like he was truly going insane with it all, he tried to make himself hate her. There was plenty of reason to, but his moods never lasted.

And he always found himself back here, where he could pretend that she had never left.

But the boy was new.

She whispered four words, and with a gasp, he suddenly understood.

"His name is..."

He sank to his knees on the flagstones, unable to look at the mirror anymore. Because that was all it really was, a mirror. A distorted lens that warped the truth just enough to drive the viewer mad. In a horrible moment, as he understood what she had been trying so hard to tell him, he dreamt of smashing it to pieces just so that he wouldn't have to look at her anymore. Wouldn't have to understand. Wouldn't have to realize that nothing is eternal. Nothing lasts.

There is no such thing as 'always.'

"His name is..."

Although he had never entertained the thought seriously, he had always fantasied that he would name any son of his "Nicholas," after the alchemist. The boy would have been called Klaus.

The boy in the mirror's face fell, and became confused as he looked down at his father, crumpled on the floor. Mute words of comfort tumbled from his mouth, and he tried to console the fallen man to no avail.

Because he understood. He knew what the boy's voice would sound like.

For that was the nature of the mirror. It showed the reverse of the truth, something unattainable, something that you ached for so badly but could never_, ever,_claim as your own because it was dead and gone, buried with a handful of lilies and a lover that was not yours.

"His name is Harry."

**xXx**

**Please review. I've never written Harry Potter fanfiction before and would be very interested in hearing people's take on this. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. :)**


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